


i'll be counting up my demons, hoping everything's not lost

by 152glasslippers



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Light Angst, Major Character Injury, Minor Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, POV Multiple, Post-Season/Series 04, Season 5 AU, blood mention, brief description of bullet wound injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 06:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11640711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/152glasslippers/pseuds/152glasslippers
Summary: Jemma shifted her eyes to Robbie. He hadn’t looked at her where she stood next to Daisy’s bed. He was focused solely on Daisy, his attention unwavering. He was motionless, silent, his right hand clenched tightly around the car keys in his fist. More than any time she’d either seen or heard of his fighting, it struck her that Robbie was a man of immense power and emotion. It was followed immediately by the realization that Daisy had finally met her match.The thought made it impossible to look at anyone in the room.Post-season 4/season 5 AU. Robbie joins the team, working alongside them after helping them break out of space prison. Takes place months later, shortly after Daisy is injured in the field. Told from three points of view: Fitz, Jemma, and Robbie. Warnings: blood mention; brief descriptions of passing out and injuries sustained from a bullet wound. (Not really hoping to achieve scientific/medical accuracy, just angst with a happy ending.)





	i'll be counting up my demons, hoping everything's not lost

_**Fitz** _

Daisy had told him to where to look for Robbie if they ever couldn’t find him.

“I mean, assuming the reason you can’t find him _isn’t_ because he’s on another astral plane.”

“It’s not actually another astral plane he goes to since the other dimensions all exist within the physical realm—” Daisy had watched him with her eyebrows raised, her lips twisted into a smirk. “Right, not the point.”

“If he’s on base—even if he’s not—he’ll be with the Charger.” Her eyes had drifted away for a second, a fond smile passing across her face. “He loves that car.”

There was no way Robbie was leaving base, not now, not with Daisy… But Fitz hadn’t seen him since they’d rushed Daisy to the lab, which meant, according to her own logic, he was with the car.

He paused at the edge of the hangar. Robbie didn’t scare him—spending time in an alternate dimension with him had cured him of that fear—but he was hesitant to disturb him.

He wondered what it was like living with the devil inside your head, on top of all your own personal demons.

Robbie didn’t move, didn’t blink as Fitz approached. He was gripping the steering wheel with both hands, staring through the windshield. Fitz stopped five feet from the driver’s side door.

“Simmons sent me. Daisy’s out of surgery.” Robbie’s eyes snapped to his at her name. They were desperate, but not orange. Safe. Still, he felt the need to warn him. “You can see her, but she’s not awake yet.”

Daisy unconscious on a hospital bed, so still and so pale, so unlike her usual fierce, vibrant self, was disarming. Fitz had seen it more than once, and the first time alone had been one time too many. It never stopped being unsettling.

Robbie was out of the car in the next second. “Take me to her.”

Fitz nodded, and Robbie let him set the pace, leading him through the base. “Simmons wants to keep her in the lab, under more direct observation.”

“How is she?”

In the months since Robbie had broken the team out, started working alongside them, he’d been a man of few, gruff words. Soft, it seemed, only around Daisy.

His voice was tighter than Fitz had ever heard it.

“I’ll let Jemma explain. She’s bio.”

 

_**Jemma** _

She watched them approach through the glass of Daisy’s recovery room. It was hard to say whose face broke her heart more: Fitz’s—like steel, bracing himself against something he knew from experience would bring him pain—or Robbie’s, like he’d lost something he’d never even had and was terrified he never would.

Fitz punched in his access code, and the door opened on a quiet _whoosh_. He motioned for Robbie to step in first, and his eyes found hers as he followed Robbie in. The steel was gone, replaced by a message and a question: Robbie was upset, but covering it. How had they gotten here? Again.

Jemma shifted her eyes to Robbie. He hadn’t looked at her where she stood next to Daisy’s bed. He was focused solely on Daisy, his attention unwavering. He was motionless, silent, his right hand clenched tightly around the car keys in his fist. More than any time she’d either seen or heard of his fighting, it struck her that Robbie was a man of immense power and emotion. It was followed immediately by the realization that Daisy had finally met her match.

The thought made it impossible to look at anyone in the room.

She lowered her eyes to the tablet in her hands. She’d given thousands of medical reports, more than she liked to remember about her own team members. Her hands trembled slightly. She cleared her throat to steady herself.

“Surgery went well. The bullet hit her liver, but didn’t cause damage to any other major organs. Her scans appear normal, so her…” She trailed off, cut short by the image of Daisy’s eyes dropping shut, her head falling abruptly to the side. “Her…losing unconsciousness was most likely due to blood loss as opposed to brain trauma.”

Her hands felt slick with the memory of Daisy’s blood, too familiar. And this time, without enough supplies on the quinjet. They were still putting Shield back together.

Overall, Daisy’s prospects were good; a full recovery was all but guaranteed. They’d given her transfusions to replace the blood she’d loss, and her internal injuries had been repaired cleanly. But it was another near miss, another close call, and Jemma had stopped feeling lucky when they turned out this way.

It felt more like tempting fate.

She managed to look up from Daisy’s chart. Fitz was watching her, the same look in his eyes as the first time this had happened: his own pain pushed aside, giving her a safe place to fall. She spoke directly to him, willing her words to reassure them both.

“She’s breathing on her own, which is a good sign.” Her head turned as if on reflex, confirming the rise and fall of Daisy’s chest. “And I’ll be checking on her regularly.”

Robbie’s voice was clear, even. “Can I stay?”

He genuinely seemed to be asking, but in a way that precluded her from even considering saying no.

“Yes.” The rest of her sentence fell heavy on her tongue. She didn’t want to say it, but he needed to know. “It will be hours before she wakes up, I’m afraid.”

Robbie didn’t flinch. “I’m good at waiting.”

She looked at Fitz to gauge his reaction, but when she did, she had a vision of a much younger version of him, sitting on the other side of a glass wall, his back pressed against hers. Holding a Chitauri helmet. _Too late. It’s done._

_You’ve been beside me the whole damn time._

She knew he was thinking the same thing.

“We’ll get you a chair.”

 

_**Robbie** _

He lost track of how many times Simmons came to check on Daisy. She was there at least once every hour, but he’d lost track of the hours, too.

By the time the room on the other side of the glass had emptied, most of the lights shut off, fatigue seemed to be setting in: Jemma’s hair was straying out of her ponytail, and her usual crisp blouse had been replaced with a wrinkled t-shirt.

Robbie’s eyes moved from Daisy to where Simmons was standing next to the bed, worrying over Daisy’s vitals on the machine to her left.

“You can sleep. I’ll come get you when she wakes up.”

Simmons switched to the tablet in her hands, scrolling. “And you don’t need sleep?” she said archly.

“Less than most.”

Her finger stopped scrolling. She looked up at him abruptly, caught off guard, but there was a different look in her eyes: assessing, analyzing. It was gone in the next second with a shake of her head. She refocused, turning her attention back to Daisy. She looked down at her on the bed.

“You’ll find me as soon as she wakes? Or if anything happens?”

Her voice was insistent, pressing. She met his eyes again, and he knew she knew she could trust him to do this. He nodded, calm but serious.

Jemma took a deep breath and nodded, too, as if reassuring herself. She took one last look at Daisy, threw him a grateful smile that he caught from the corner of his eye, and she was gone.

That had been hours ago, and the room around him had been empty and dark ever since. It was just him and Daisy.

He didn’t mind.

His fingers tightened against his thigh, and he found himself, again, wishing for the keys he’d tucked in his right pocket. To spin them in his hand, catch them, until he felt some of the nervous energy leave his body. But he didn’t want to disturb her.

He wanted to talk to her, touch her, but he was afraid even that would bother her, disrupt her rest before she was ready to wake up. He’d never seen her look fragile before, not even when he’d watched the bones in both her arms fracture right in front of him.

He took a slow breath. Sitting here was enough. Looking at her was enough. He’d spent so many months away from her—the sight of her, the sound of her—that just being here was enough.

By the time he met her, he’d already been ripped apart from his life more than once, in more than one way. It hurt to leave an old life, to watch it disappear. And it hurt to leave Gabe, to lie, even when it had just been about those few hours a night. It didn’t hurt to leave her. Not right away, not when she knew why. It hurt later, once he was gone, once he was no longer in charge.

Once he couldn’t get back to her.

He tried not to look too closely at the feeling. He’d been gone longer than he’d known her the first time he went away. It was inexplicable, even to himself.

But it was real.

He watched Daisy breathe, deeply, a frown forming on her face, a slight crease between her eyebrows. His eyes darted to her monitors. He knew next to nothing about what they did, but nothing had changed. He looked back at her.

Her eyelids fluttered slightly before opening in a series of quick blinks, her eyes adjusting. Her gaze was cast downward, her eyes on her arms, the bed, before she heaved a sigh and cast her eyes at the ceiling, her head sinking even further into the pillow.

And then she froze. He watched her realize he was sitting there, and then her eyes were on his.

“Robbie.” It was just a whisper. It sounded like relief.

“Hey, chica.”

The smallest of smiles hovered at the corners of her mouth.

“What time is it?”

“Late.”

She looked past him, to the lab behind him. “Where is everyone?”

“Asleep.”

“So it’s _late,_ late.” Her eyes moved back to his, surveying him. He went still under her gaze, trying not to give away any more than he likely already had about how long he’d been sitting there. Even in a post-surgery haze, she’d put it together.

He looked right back at her, and a long moment passed, Daisy’s machines whirring in the background. He wanted to tell her something, anything; to put into words why he was there, why he was in that chair, waiting for her, but nothing came. So he repeated back to her the words she’d said to him the first time he’d come back.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again.” He kept his eyes on hers, imploring her to remember, to understand what he was trying to say.

Her face went a little soft, her eyes sad, but warm. “I’m as surprised as you,” she answered.

And he knew she understood.

He made himself stand up from the chair, and Daisy made a noise of protest.

“I told Jemma I’d wake her as soon as you woke up.”

She nodded. “Okay.” He made it to the glass door before her voice stopped him again. “Robbie?”

He turned around. She was pale against the white bedsheets, but a thousand times more alive than when he’d walked in there.

“After you get Jemma.” She paused. “Come back.”

He nodded once, smiled.

As if he was going anywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
